Pollster David Hill comments that new survey results in Florida are very encouraging for President Bush.
Given the likelihood that Florida will again almost certainly play a pivotal role in the battle for the presidency, a recent Mason-Dixon poll there showing George Bush with a strong lead over John Kerry is of tremendous significance.Most of Florida’s prestigious newspapers have accepted Mason-Dixon’s dominance and subscribe to its results — so when Coker’s latest survey of 625 Florida voters taken at the beginning of this month showed Bush beating Kerry 51 percent to 43 percent, Republicans had a strong justification for joy.
Sen. Kerry (D-Mass.) himself provided the poll’s most encouraging results. His unfavorable name recognition has risen to 42 percent in Florida, twice what it was last November, the last time Mason-Dixon polled, and several points higher than President Bush’s negatives.
The poll’s cross-tabs showed that Kerry has several notable problems. First, he’s losing 18 percent of the state’s Democrats to Bush. By comparison, Bush is losing only 7 percent of Republicans. Kerry’s problem with his base is also evident in the minority community, where 11 percent of blacks said they plan to vote for Bush.
But the most encouraging minority result is for Hispanic voters. Only 36 percent of Cubans and other Hispanics plan to vote for Kerry.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and Press, said this morning on NPR that Bush is benefitting from a "rally" effect by voters who don't want to go wobbly during this troubled period in Iraq.
(Perhaps these results will keep Bush's fair-weather friends in the Republican Party from running for the tall grass far in advance of the actual election, which will mostly turn on events, foreign and domestic, during September-October.)
Online pundit John McIntyre notes the gap between current poll data and the tone of press coverage about the political contest:
The pattern that is beginning to emerge is the press is simply incapable of accurately handicapping this race because they have an inherent, ideological opposition to President Bush and his approach to the War on Terror that is completely out of whack with the majority of the American people.Posted by Alan at April 21, 2004 12:10 PMReporters see Iraq as a debacle and a quagmire and just assume it has to hurt President Bush. They watch the President's news conference and become more convinced the President is an idiot, while the average American watches the same press conference and sees a resolute and determined leader.